


Paper Bag Romance

by Innwich



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Human, Diners, M/M, Speed Dating, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3349331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was Valentine’s Day, and Dean was wearing a paper bag over his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Bag Romance

Dean had signed up for speed dating around this time of year again.

It had something to do with watching his friends being lovey-dovey with their better halves and seeing the season of love beckoning to him from everywhere, including the liquor aisles where pink bottles of fruity wine were popping up next to his Jack Daniel’s.

Only this time, the organizer had everyone wear a paper bag over their heads during the dates. If anyone came to the coffee shop, they would probably think they were walking into was a secret society of supervillains.

Friggin’ speed dating, man.

They were just supposed to use a marker to draw on their paper bags, but some people had gone to town on their paper bags. Dean had no idea it was possible to draw something that looked like it came out of a comic book. Either those people were just that good, or they were really desperate to net a guy or a girl.

The guy on Dean’s right had brought a dog with him to impress the girls. His date was cooing over the dog. Dammit, Dean should have thought of that He would get everyone if they only saw Baby. But he had to leave Baby in the parking lot behind the conference center.

The bell rang.

“Time’s up,” Pamela said, restarting the timer. “Find your new dates, folks.”

“Bye,” Dean said, grinning widely to Jane, or was it Jenny? She had drawn cat whiskers on her paper bag, so he’d been calling her the Cat Lady in his head. It was hard to remember names when he didn’t have faces to go with them.

Jane or Jenny winked at him as she got up from the table. Yeah, Dean was gonna get some matches at the end of this thing.

“This will be our last round before we wrap up for the night. Make it count!” Pamela said.

Awesome. Dean shifted in his seat, while people was milling around the coffee shop to find someone they hadn’t talked to yet. His butt was aching from where he’d been sitting for so long. He had no idea it could get this hot and scratchy under the paper bag, and he suspected he’d been breathing the same stale air for the last two hours.

A man sagged into the seat across from Dean.

“You are at the wrong table, buddy,” Dean said.

The man jumped to his feet with a start. His tie was crooked and his trench coat was wrinkled. Seemed like Dean wasn’t the only guy that was getting burnt out by all those dates. “I’m sorry. I’ll move.”

Dean looked around the coffee shop. Everyone else had sat down with their new dates and was chatting away. There wasn’t another empty seat. “It’s the last round. May as well sit down and talk.”

“Thank you,” the guy said, dropping back into the chair. “I didn’t mean to deprive you of a date.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Dean said. “I don’t expect my soulmate to show up at the last minute of this thing anyway.”

“You’re very pessimistic.”

“Nope, I’m adorable and that’s not part of the description. Look again,” Dean said, jabbing at the paper bag over his face.

The man stared at the messily scribbled words above the eyeholes of the bag. “‘My name is Dean Winchester. I'm an Aquarius, I enjoy sunsets, long walks on the beach and frisky women. And I did not kill anyone.’” The man paused. “Why did you draw cat ears on your paper bag?”

“Dude! They’re bat ears,” Dean said. “I’m Batman.”

“Who?” the man said.

“Seriously? You don’t know who Batman is?” Dean said.

“Is it the stage name of a singer?” the man said doubtfully.

“I can’t believe this.” Dean laughed. “Didn’t you see those Batman movies?”

“I don’t watch movies,” the man said. “The storylines don’t often make much sense.”

“You’re missing out on a lot of good stuff, that’s all I’m saying,” Dean said. “Okay, my turn.”

The guy nodded. “Go ahead.”

His paper bag was decorated with a half-hearted drawing of a circle floating above two blobs of cloud, but Dean was gonna take a wild stab and say that they were supposed to be a halo and a pair of feathery wings.

“Your name is Angel? Angela? D’Angelo?” Dean squinted. He could see the guy’s shadowed eyes and mouth through the three holes cut into the bag, and nothing more. “Are you Italian?”

“I’m Castiel.”

“Sounds Vatican.”

“It’s actually the name of an angel from non-canonical religious texts,” Cas said.

“Did it hurt?” Dean said.

“Excuse me?”

“Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?”

“No, because I’m not really an angel,” Cas said slowly with the care of a father that was telling his kid that Santa didn’t exist, or a guy that’d found himself in a loony bin. “I’m a man.”

Dean sighed. “I know that. It’s a line, Cas.”

“Oh,” Cas said.

Dean could see those pink lisp forming that cute “O” shape in the mouth hole of the bag. He refused to chase that line of thought, because it led straight down to the gutter. “Are you telling me no one has used that line on you this whole night?”

“No, this is the first time I heard it,” Cas said.

“Chicks don’t use that line, huh?” Dean said, leaning back in his seat. “So, Cas, have you always wanted to wear a paper bag and meet girls?”

“No, my friend made me come with her. She said there couldn’t be a demon without an angel,” Cas said.

“Are you talking about Meg with the devil horns and pitch fork on her bag? She gave me the creeps. No offence,” Dean said. She’d tried to grind herself on his lap within three minutes of their speed date. Dean loved any woman that knew what she wanted, but then Meg had quizzed him on everything in his life, right down to the stuff about his dad and Sam. Dean would have to check the back of his car before he drove home for the night.

“She is an acquired taste,” Cas said.

“‘An acquired taste’. Is there something you want to share with the class, Casanova?”

“What?” Cas said, somehow managing to fill that one word with all the confusion of a lost puppy. A lost puppy that was kicked out of the house and left to wander the battlefields of love on its own.

Taking pity on him, Dean said, “I’m just messing with you.”

“I’m usually not this bad at picking up jokes, but I’m distracted by my hunger,” Cas said. As if on cue, Cas’s stomach let out an unhappy grumble. “I had an early dinner before I came over here.”

“Me too,” Dean said. Now that he was thinking about it, it’d been hours since he’d had his dinner before driving down to get here on time. The coffee shop had only given him a free drink, and their pastries looked soggy after having sat in the display cases for a whole day. “There’s not going to be anything open this late.”

“I know a diner that is still open down the street. They have the best cheeseburgers,” Cas said. “I’ve eaten a dozen of their burgers for dinner once.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’d have eaten more if I wasn’t too fully already.” Cas said wistfully.

“There’s no way their cheeseburgers taste that good,” Dean said.

“They bake their own buns to make sure they are toasty on the outside and soft on the inside. You can’t get the buns from anywhere else,” Cas said. “The cheeseburgers are only made when an order has been put in, so they’re hot when they are served and the cheese is melting over the ground beef.”

Dean swallowed thickly. “What about their pies?”

“They serve pies with ice-cream. The ice cream is made from milk from a nearby farm,” Cas said. “The cows looked happy when I drove past them on the fields. That must be why they produce such good milk.”

“The pie, Cas. What’s the pie like?”

“The filling isn’t too sweet or sour. Bits of the crust crumble and flake off the pie when served,” Cas said. “You can smell the cinnamon even before the pie is carried out of the kitchen.”

Dean groaned. He was a lot hungrier than he’d been a few minutes ago. Now it felt like it’d been days since he’d eaten something. “Get me out of here, Cas. I need those foods in me right now.”

“I suspect the event is coming to an end soon,” Cas said.

The bell rang.

Pamela climbed onto a large table that the coffee shop had set up for her. “Everyone gather around. We’ll have our grand finale for the night.”

“Grand finale?” Dean said to Cas.

Cas shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Dean followed Cas to the table that Pamela was standing on. Soon, there were a gang of paper-bag people gathered around Pamela.

“Before we end the night, you’ll all take off your paper bags,” Pamela said. “Are you excited?”

“Yeah,” came the scattered replies from the group.

“You can do better than that, people,” Pamela said. “Are you excited?”

“Yeah!”

“Take off your bags on the count of three. One. Two. Three!”

Dean took off his paper bag, and took a deep breath of fresh cool air. There were loud rustlings as everyone took off their paper bags. Then Dean turned to look at Cas, and stared.

Cas was blinking like he hadn’t seen sunlight in a long time. His hair was tousled from being crammed in the paper bag, and his forehead was sweaty. Dean didn’t know what he’d imagined Cas to look like; he only knew that Cas had bags under his eyes and stubble on his cheeks, and it all fit together on this nerdy dude that wore trench coat and ate fast foods like it was nobody’s business.

“You look good,” Dean said without thinking, and wanted to kick himself immediately. Could he sound any more like a creep?

“Thank you,” Cas said. “You too.”

Dean didn’t blush. No, he wasn’t a teenage schoolgirl that had just received a compliment from a guy at school. He was a grown-ass dude, so he grinned and hoped he wasn’t pale enough for the flush to show on his face. “Thanks, Cas.”

“Are we still getting burgers?” Cas said.

“Burgers and pies, Cas,” Dean corrected. “Don’t forget the pies.”

Later, Dean bit into his cheeseburger and moaned at the tastes of stringy cheese and grilled beef on his tongue and found Cas staring at him across the table with those intense eyes.

Dean was in Heaven.

Or maybe it was love.


End file.
